Just Watched

Rocket scientist weighs in on 'Gravity'

Story highlights

Dean Obeidallah: Some popular films have come under attack for being loose with the facts

He says a film such as "Gravity" is clearly science fiction; no need to fact-check every point

Only documentary filmmakers are required to be true to the events they depict, he says

Obeidallah: Relax and enjoy films that take liberties to make story lines more compelling

Can we simply enjoy movies without having to fact-check every little thing?

Apparently not, because so many people feel compelled to show us how clever they are by attempting to point out factual errors depicted in film after film.

News flash: Movies are supposed to be an entertaining experience. They are an escape from reality. If you want to learn history or facts, read a book. Or if you are too lazy to do that, then google it.

We have seen this self-aggrandizing spectacle of people fact-checking movies with two recent films. The first is the current box office champion, "Gravity," with the other being "The Butler."

Dean Obeidallah

"Gravity," which stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, follows a space mission that goes terribly awry. Despite its box office success, a chorus of critics have attacked numerous scientific flaws in the film -- such as pointing out the allegedly inaccurate way Bullock's hair floated in zero gravity.

But that's nothing compared to the recent barrage of Twitter attacks launched at the film by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. His tweets ranged from criticizing the direction space debris was depicted as travelling to more nuanced issues such as faulting filmmakers for showing that the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and a Chinese space station were, "all in sight lines of one another."

This is not the guy you want to sit next to in a movie theater during "Star Wars."

I can just hear him whispering things such as: "The Death Star is too big to fly at that rate of speed," or "Yoda could never survive in that atmosphere."

Just Watched

How realistic is 'Gravity'?

Look, "Gravity" doesn't even pretend to be based on anything more than the screenwriter's imagination. And here's the biggest thing for people like deGrasse Tyson to keep in mind: it's science fiction, for God's sake! You would think the "fiction" part of "science fiction" is something that an astrophysicist could comprehend.

And then there's "The Butler," the Lee Daniels film about a man who served for decades as a butler for various presidents at the White house.

This film was attacked by the left and the right for being historically inaccurate. Some have cited errors with the film's account of specific instances of the civil rights movement while others expressed outrage over the way President Ronald Reagan was depicted -- apparently some view Reagan as a deity.

Here's a spoiler alert (and by "spoiler alert," I mean a spoiler to people who have never googled or read anything about the film): It was fiction -- that means it was made up. There was no "Cecil Gaines," the butler character played by Forest Whitaker in the film. The film does not even purport to be a bio pic.

Sure, it was loosely inspired by the life of Eugene Allen, a man who served as a butler in the White House for 34 years for eight presidents, but the film was a fictionalized account.

And we saw similar obsessive fact-checking last year with movies such as "Argo" and "Lincoln." I guess we should be thankful that Twitter wasn't around when "Forrest Gump" was released because people would have gone crazy with tweets over that one.

Can we agree on something?

A director who is making a documentary should be required to present an accurate recitation of facts and history. But for all other movies, filmmakers should be afforded creative license to make the movie that fulfills their vision of the story they want to tell, even ones based on real events. Filmmakers are not historians, nor should they be held to such a standard.

Consequently, directors must be allowed to add scenes or dialogue that make the film more entertaining, such as the fictionalized depiction in "Argo" of American diplomats trying to board a plane to escape from Iran before they are discovered.

So here's my advice to all you self-appointed movie fact-checkers who are just waiting to pounce on any mistake you detect in a film to show off how clever you are: Relax.

Go to a movie, log off of Twitter, silence your phone, sit back, eat some overpriced cold popcorn that's part of the criminally expensive "value combo" and watch the film.